Summary
Marjanovic Dragoljub, Saint Sava in the Vatopedi Monastery
In this paper we investigate the significance of St. Sava joining the brotherhood of the Vatopaidi monastery on Mount Athos around the year 1193/4. Vatopaidi was among the oldest coenobitic monasteries on Athas, in fact, at the time when Sava, the son of the former grand zhupan of Serbia, became a member of its monastic community, Vatopaidi was a third or even second ranking Athonite monastery, with a historical record of its existence from the year 985. while the tradition of its founding was linking the Vatopaidi monastery with the Byzantine emperors Constantine the Great, Theodosius the Great and his son, Emperor Arcadius. Taking the monastic habit in Vatopaidi and the monastic name Save by which he will become widely renowned and famous already during his lifetime, Sava managed to further establish himself in the Byzantine ecclesiastical environment of the late 12~1 century. As a Vatopaidi monk, later joined by his father, monk Simeon Nemanja, Sava engaged in an unknown until that time ktetorship which lavished not only Vatopaidi, but many other Athonite holy churches and monasteries. As a monk of Vatopaidi Sava led a monastic delegation to the court of the Emperor Alexios III Angelos, which by itself testifies that the monastic community of Mount Athos understood the manifold significance of the dynastic and family relations which Sava's Nemanjic family established with the Angeloi dynasty. Only in such historical context we can properly understand the wider significance of Sava's joining the Vatopaidi brotherhood, from which he and his father Simeon Nemanja will proceed to reestablish the Hilandar monastery, first as a Vatopaidi dependence, with the imperial approval of Alexios III Angelos, and later, with the help of the protos of Mount Athos Gerasimos, to establish the Hilandar monastery, again with the imperial approval of Alexios III, as an independent and self-governing Serbian Athonite monastery, by which a crucial step was made towards later establishment of the autocephalous Serbian Church with the blessing of the Emperor Theodore I Laskaris in 1218/9. in Nicaea. However, all these events would have probably had another turn if St. Sava hadn't left the Russian monastery and joined the much renowned and wealthy Vatopaidi monastery, thus establishing the path towards his later great achievements in the Byzantine world after the year 1204.
